Lot
38

FAULKNER, William. Mosquitoes. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927.

8o. Original blue cloth, lettered in yellow on front cover and spine; EXCEEDINGLY RARE "CARD PLAYER" PICTORIAL DUST JACKET (very light wear to extremities, rear panel with a small chip and a few short closed tears); quarter morocco slipcase.

"PROBABLY THE SCARCEST OF FAULKNER JACKETS"--Petersen.

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING, IN THE SCARCE ALTERNATE DUST JACKET (Petersen Collector's Notebook A4c state, no priority) with the "card players" design. "The jacket design, in red, blue and black, is a cartoon representation of four card players aboard a yacht. Otherwise, the matter on the spine, back and flaps is the same as on the mosquito motif jacket, though the printing is in the altered colors...the design was perpetuated on later editions of Mosquitoes, but there is no other reason to believe that it is not simultaneous with the "mosquitoe" design in the first printing" (Petersen). Faulkner's satirical second novel about the members of a New Orleans artistic colony who embark on a four-day yachting cruise.

The Serendipity catalogue of the Petersen collection states the only other known copy of Mosquitoes in this jacket came from the Irwin T. Holtzman collection. Apparently no copy in this dust jacket has appeared at auction according to American Book Prices Current. Massey 154; Petersen A4.1b. A FINE COPY.